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154 T A M A R H E R M A N N
as the official representative and definitive leader of the Palestinian
people. It was obvious to everyone who watched the ceremony that
Rabin retained a negative opinion of Arafat, or at best a very guarded
one. True, some leaders, such as Shimon Peres, were demonstratively
friendly toward him, but these were mainly leaders whose views on the
regional conflict and the means for its resolution have never been very
popular.
The public thus remained bewildered and divided about the other
side's leader. In late 1994, more than a year after the signing of the
first Oslo accord, 43.5 percent described Arafat as a terrorist, about
23 percent said he was a statesman, and 33.5 percent were unable to
decide whether he was a terrorist or a statesman. As figure 5.5 shows,
these percentages were largely unchanged in the 1996 and 1998 surveys.
However, a substantive change occurred in the 2000 survey,
which was not surprising against the background of the events that
year and the unrelenting personal invective hurled at Arafat by
Israeli leaders after the failure of the Camp David summit that summer.
The proportion of those who considered Arafat a terrorist leaped to
71 percent and in the summer of 2003 stood at 86 percent. 32
The repeated pronouncements by Israel's leaders about Arafat's
part in the escalation of violence and the government resolution of
December 2001 declaring the Palestinian leader's irrelevance were
100% -
90% -
80%
70%
60%
50%
40% -|
30%
20%
10%
21 I 19 I I 12
15 I I 22 I I 74
56 I I 50
• Don't know
• 5 Statesman
g 4 Somewhat a
statesman
• 3 Not sure
H 2 Somewhat a
terrorist
• 1 Terrorist
0%
December January
1994 1996
July
1998
October February
2000 2001
July
2003
Figure 5.5
In Your Opinion, to What Degree is Arafat a Terrorist or a Statesman?
Source: The Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research, Tel Aviv University, http://
www. tau .ac .il/peace.